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Mar 10, 2012

MARCH TO COMPLETION!

How much American folk music originated in olde Ireland.... a tradition to cherish....

The past 4 months have wrought havoc, pain, joy, and rebirth to our household as we traversed the path of life. Those of you who know us personally are acquainted with why I say that. But the "new" is about to come to completion as the work on the house comes to an end, for the time being.
On Oct. 30th, Larry had a heart attack that he thought was food poisoning. He ignored it and spent the next week, working as though nothing was wrong, all the while suffering from congestive heart failure because of the damage done to his heart. The following week, on Sat. Nov. 5th, around 1:00am, he suffered another attack which prompted him to finally go to the hospital. After hours of tests, including an unsuccessful heart cath, they performed 5 bypasses that saved his life, from 8:30am till about 5:30pm in surgery. He was in recovery for almost 3 days, while we waited to see if his kidney and liver functions would rebound enough for him to be moved to the ICU. After 4 days in ICU, he was moved to the CCU unit where he spent the next 5 days before he was released to go home.
As this was happening, our daughter hired a contractor to do mold remediation in the lower part of our house, which involved remediation of the crawl space under the middle level, removal of 1/2 of the lower kitchen cabinets, and removal of drywall, doors and flooring in the lower level. As they finished the work, we spent four weeks in an extended stay motel after he was released from the hospital because we could not move back in until it was done. When it was finished, we were left with all of the rebuild to do, as well as work on the upstairs hall and bath that had been started before the heart attack.

This is the lower bathroom that borders on the crawl space where the mold problem originated because of a leaking pipe that was between the drywall and the outside wall behind our kitchen sink. They removed all of the fixtures and drywall from the window level to the floor, as well as the flooring.

This was the old furnace that we were going to replace anyway.

This is the family room wall that bordered on the crawl space. The drywall and paneling was removed.

This is the back of the kitchen wall after the remainder of the cabinets were removed.

This is the floor that had to be repaired under the kitchen sink and cabinets.

This was the 1st thing that had to be repaired to keep the pipes from freezing.

This is the kitchen door that had to be replaced anyway. The old one was literally coming apart and we kept it shut and locked because we could not use it. This is the new door, the 2nd thing to be repaired.

The next thing to be done was the upstairs bathroom. This all began because the original, 40 year old bathtub had begun to rust away around the drain connection and water was leaking from it. We thought it was a leaky pipe, but the plumber discovered it was the tub, not the pipes. The plumber removed the old tub but had to cut away from the drywall around it and remove tile from the floor, which could not be matched and replaced, thus requiring us to re-tile the entire floor and repair the drywall. We chose to also remove the old tile from the walls and replace it with drywall, so it turned into a complete remodel. The old vanity came apart when they removed it so it was replaced too. I repainted and reorganized the linen closet after they finished the work. (Shown below.)

This is the vanity that we chose from Lowe's.

After the bathroom was completed, the work on the kitchen began. The new cabinets are shown here.

The walls were repainted too. The flooring will be replaced when everything else is finished.

We will have remodeled 6 or our 9 rooms when this is all done. Quite an undertaking, and it has taken over 4 months to complete. All because of some little spores that took up housekeeping in the crawl space and aging fixtures. Very little of this was preplanned, thrust upon us by circumstances.